Taking Stock

Today I took stock, I thought about how many times I cried while I should’ve been smiling. I thought about how many times I felt like crying but couldn’t. I thought about the people I made cry and the many of those times I felt no regret until today. I thought about how many times tears were all I could manage to show because I felt so lost. I thought about all the crying I’ve yet to do. I thought about all the movies, books, stories I’ve heard that made me cry. I thought about my story and the few people that only know parts of it that cried for me. I thought about being a child crying because I wanted to be some where, any where else.

Today I took stock, on all the things my eyes had seen as a child, my ears had heard. I thought about how I’d die if my own child had ever seen, heard or lived through those things that I had. I thought about the pain I felt being a child of abuse and neglect, how lost I was with no one that cared to help me, save me, for at least a night. How many children have I tried to save? How many children have I seen living the same life in which I prayed to God to let me sleep and never wake to again? I took stock on how many broken adults I’ve meant that didn’t even live a portion of what I had. How had they become so broken? How can someone born of a married couple, raised in a loving family, raised in the suburbs be so damaged?

Today I took stock, on all the years, months, weeks, days, minutes, moments I’ve wasted spending them with people who treated me just as bad as my parents did as I was growing up. How much I’d loved them, how much I’d done for them, how much I’d sacrificed for them. Every time I’ve tried my best to make a smile come across the face of someone who cared little or nothing about my emotions or well being. Why had I done these things, for people like this? Why am I repeating this pattern of oppression? When my eyes see clearly the path unto which the road is leading, why do I keep walking it?

Today I took stock, not in what I have, had, or accomplished in my lifetime, but how much I didn’t do. For every time I was silent when I should have been talking. For every time I was talking when I should have been silent. For every time I should have been taking action yet I was inactive. For every wrong that I saw but didn’t attempt to make right, for every right I saw but didn’t attempt to complement. For the things I let go that I wasn’t ready to let go of, and the things I took so much pride in that weren’t really worth a damn. For every moment I cherished that was a lie, for every moment that I refused to cherish until it went bye.

Today I took stock, and I am left with this, I’m empty inside!!!!!!

Coloreds is Takin' Over

I’m not gone cry

I’m not gone cry

“While all the time that I was loving you, you were busy loving yourself I would stop breathing if you told me to, now you’re busy loving someone else..” As the song starts I can remember seeing the film (Waiting to Exhale) in the theater for the first time ever, it was in the old Cheltenham Mall theater. It was so crowded every seat in the place was taken, all anyone could see was a sea of woman filling the entire place. There may have been about ten or so males in there that evening. I sat in a row with about eight other females, we had all came to see this movie together. When the part in the film came on where this song (Not Gone Cry by Mary J Bliege) lowly played in the background every single female in the place started to sing this song, my entire body was covered with goose bumps as I sang the song as well. It was one of the most amazing things that I to this day have ever experienced, with lord knows how many other people, 75 or 100 who knows. But the sound of all of us sining in agreement, with feeling, the sound was just amazing. Now that several years have passed, I’ve lived more than enough experiences where I can actually understand the words, feelings, and emotions behind this song, that scene in the movie and why so many of us that night felt the need to sing this song.

“I should have left your ass long time ago, I’m not gone cry, I’m not gone cry, I’m not gone shed no tears because you’re not worth my tears. I was your lover and your secretary working every day of the week was at the job when no one else was there helping you get on your feet..” I mean even though many of us weren’t married and probably like myself still have yet to get married, this song speaks to the heart of every woman (man) hurt, putting yourself out for someone else just having them play with your heart just to leave you for another person. I mean the song talks about how easily someone can just leave you after an extended amount of time together basically without regard to the commitment in which the two of you had made to one another, or the emotional attachment. “ eleven years I’ve sacrificed and you can leave me at the drop of a dime...” This also leaves a person feeling as if the time they’ve put into a relationship was wasted in essence it may feel like that, there is no positive way to put a spin on that. However every personal experience with another human being is an opportunity to learn something that you can use later on in your lifetime. I mean life’s lessons aren’t always so easy and none messy, there is going to be difficulty, there is going to be a lot of mess to clean up, there’s going to be complications involved with them. But they aren’t for naut and if you’re a quick learner you may not have to repeat them ever again, because you would have gotten out of that relationship or situation what you needed to avoid ever being put in that place ever again.

I just only wish that people would no longer have to learn these lessons that end with so much pain, but as long as there are “assholes” in this world there is going to be pain inflicted to anyone who let’s someone into their hearts, anyone who opens up their lives and lets another person into it. Until this day there are always going to be songs written like this or movies like “Waiting To Exhale”, dedicated to the pain that so many people male and female have been through and sad to say real life doesn’t always have the movie happy endings in them either.